1. Technical Field
The present invention is directed toward a method, computer program product, and data processing system for circumventing commercial practices targeted at individual consumers in a large computer network such as the Internet. More specifically, the present invention is directed toward hiding a user's true identity from monitoring and profiling by online organizations such as retailers.
2. Description of Related Art
The Internet, also referred to as an “internetwork”, is a set of computer networks, possibly dissimilar, joined together by means of gateways that handle data transfer and the conversion of messages from protocols of the sending network to the protocols used by the receiving network (with packets if necessary). When capitalized, the term “Internet” refers to the collection of networks and gateways that use the TCP/IP suite of protocols.
The Internet has become a cultural fixture as a source of both information and entertainment. Many businesses are creating Internet sites as an integral part of their marketing efforts, informing consumers of the products or services offered by the business or providing other information seeking to engender brand loyalty. Many federal, state, and local government agencies are also employing Internet sites for informational purposes, particularly agencies that must interact with virtually all segments of society such as the Internal Revenue Service and secretaries of state. Providing informational guides and/or searchable databases of online public records may reduce operating costs. Further, the Internet is becoming increasingly popular as a medium for commercial transactions.
Currently, the most commonly employed method of transferring data over the Internet is to employ the World Wide Web environment, also called simply “the Web”. Other Internet resources exist for transferring information, such as File Transfer Protocol (FTP) and Gopher, but have not achieved the popularity of the Web. In the Web environment, servers and clients effect data transaction using the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), a known protocol for handling the transfer of various data files (e.g., text, still graphic images, audio, motion video, etc.). The information in various data files is formatted for presentation to a user by a standard page description language, the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). In addition to basic presentation formatting, HTML allows developers to specify “links” to other Web resources identified by a Uniform Resource Locator (URL). A URL is a special syntax identifier defining a communications path to specific information. Each logical block of information accessible to a client, called a “page” or a “Web page”, is identified by a URL. The URL provides a universal, consistent method for finding and accessing this information, not necessarily for the user, but mostly for the user's Web “browser”. A browser is a program capable of submitting a request for information identified by an identifier, such as, for example, a URL. A user may enter a domain name through a graphical user interface (GUI) for the browser to access a source of content. The domain name is automatically converted to the Internet Protocol (IP) address by a domain name system (DNS), which is a service that translates the symbolic name entered by the user into an IP address by looking up the domain name in a database. The internet also is widely used to transfer applications to users using browsers. With respect to commerce on the Web, individual consumers and business use the Web to purchase various goods and services. In offering goods and services, some companies offer goods and services solely on the Web while others use the Web to extend their reach.
All of this connectivity, however, comes at a price. While information, from businesses for instance, is more accessible to individual users, information about the individual users themselves is easily collected and disseminated. “Cookies” and other mechanisms for “maintaining state” (i.e., preserving a user's identity over a series of web transactions) allow for easy tracking of user's purchase and other habits over time. A “cookie” is a piece of information from a web server that is stored on a user's computer and retrieved by the web server in subsequent transactions so as to preserve the identity of the user across the transactions. One type of cookie, a “persistent cookie,” resides on a user's computer even after a web-browsing session has ended. As a user performs web transactions, such as reading particular pages or buying particular products, the web servers serving those transactions watch for the cookies they have placed on the user's computer. Using these cookies, web servers and the organizations that run them can catalog users' transactions to form user profiles, particularly when persistent cookies are used, since persistent cookies can be tracked over a long period of time and across many transactions.
Another way in which a web-based organization tracks users is by requiring a user to “log in” to a site before using it. A user provides a user name and password before accessing the site. Although this is usually a convenience to a repeat user (for instance, a logged-in user need not repeat typing in billing and shipping information to an online retailer), it allows a user's activity to be monitored and profiled.
There are many uses for these profiles. One commonly used tactic is to provide targeted advertising. For instance, if a web site is aware that a user lives in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, the site can display advertisements for Dallas-Fort Worth-area businesses. While such targeted advertisement seems relatively benign, this kind of profiling can give businesses unfair commercial advantages. If a merchant knows that a customer has a liking for a particular type of product, the merchant will know that the customer will be likely to buy the product at a higher price than other customers. Likewise, if a customer does not normally buy a particular product, a merchant that is aware of this fact can undercut competitors' prices on that item as an enticement to lure that customer into buying the product. All of this can occur without a buyer's even being aware that it is happening.
A need exists, therefore, for a method of circumventing the use of profiling against consumers. A further benefit would arise if such circumvention gave consumers a similar advantage over merchants and other profiling organizations.